IRWIN, Pa. — After weeks of getting beat up over Bain Capital, Mitt Romney tried on Tuesday to turn the attacks against President Barack Obama.

Pointing to a quote from the president on Friday about the nature of building businesses, Romney cast Obama as being anti-free market and supporting a system where only the government is responsible for business success. At a rally here, Romney — without ever mentioning Bain — sought to strike back at some of the Democrats attacks.

Romney also painted Obama as “foreign,” a description that came only hours after a top surrogate, former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu, walked back a comment in a conference call that the president needs to “learn to be American.”

“In the past people of both parties understood that encouraging achievement, encouraging success, encouraging people to lift themselves as high as they can, encouraging entrepreneurs, celebrating success instead of attacking it and denigrating it makes America strong,” Romney said. “That’s the right course for this country. His [Obama’s] course is extraordinarily foreign,” Romney told an audienceat an oil-and-gas drill support company.

In his remarks, Romney singled out a line from Obama’s stump speech on Friday in Virginia, attacking the president for saying no one is successful on their own, calling it “insulting” to all entrepreneurs.

“If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help,” Obama said in Roanoke, Va. “There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own.”

The crowd of about 1,000 booed when Romney quoted a line, “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that.”

Romney argued otherwise, saying it was the entrepreneur who built the business, not those who provide services funded with taxpayer dollars.

“The taxpayers pay for government,” Romney said. “It’s not like government just provides those to all of us and we say, ‘Oh, thank you government for doing those things.’ No, in fact we pay for them, and we benefit for them and we appreciate the work that they do and the sacrifices that are done by people who work in government. But they did not build this business.”

Romney sought to make the argument about well-known American businessmen.

“The idea to say that Steve Jobs didn’t build Apple, that Henry Ford didn’t build Ford Motor, that Papa John didn’t build Papa John Pizza, that Ray Crock didn’t build McDonalds, that Bill Gates didn’t build Microsoft, you go on the list long enough,” Romney said. “To say something like that is not just foolishness, it’s insulting to every entrepreneur, every innovator in America, and it’s wrong. “

Romney called the soundbite evidence that Obama favors a government-dependent society even beyond business. It may also have been an indirect way of beginning to rescue his own tarnished brand as Obama’s campaign is painting him as a ruthless business tycoon who laid people off and sent jobs overseas as CEO of Bain.

“It also extends to everybody in America that wants to lift themselves up a little further,” Romney said. “That goes back to school to get a degree and see if they can get a little better job, to somebody who wants to get some new skills and get a little higher income, to somebody who may have dropped out that decides to get back into school and go for it. People who reach to try and bring themselves up, the president would say, well you didn’t do that, all right?”

“As President Obama said the other day, those who start businesses succeed because of their individual initiative — their drive, hard work, and creativity,” campaign spokeswoman Lis Smith said. “But there are critical actions we must take to support businesses and encourage new ones — that means we need the best infrastructure, a good education system, and affordable, domestic sources of clean energy.”

The presumptive GOP nominee’s remarks were some of the strongest attacks Romney has leveled at the president in recent weeks. Many Republicans have urged Romney to begin counter-punching more aggressively in his own defense.

But on Tuesday, Romney revived some of the lines he had not trotted out on the stump since the GOP primary, many that were met with cheers from crowd.

“This election is to a great degree about the soul of America,” Romney said.

Romney also invoked former President Bill Clinton again, a frequent metaphorical friend during the primary.

“This is very different by the way than the Democratic Party of Bill Clinton, that said that the era of big government was over,” Romney said.